So, I’d posted just a little bit ago, basically saying that there probably wouldn’t be another post (the one I’d promised you at least) for a while, but here it is! See that, things are looking up already!

In my last article, “The Soft Re-Opening”, I mentioned a number of updates. The two I’ll focus on between this article and the next are diet and exercise. Of course, these are the very foundation upon which weight loss is built. Good health and fitness set upon the structure of diet and exercise.

This article will contain the first, diet. As indicated in the update, I want to go back a year and work our way to now, highlighting successes and failures, ideas tried, etc…

A year ago, Thanksgiving of 2011 had just passed and Christmas was on its way. I had started losing real weight (more than the typical water weight), which blew my mind. I didn’t think I had it in me. I’d really given up on ever losing weight without surgery. I hadn’t lost the first hundred yet, mind you, in fact, I’m not sure I was out of the “500 club” (how I refer to weighing 500 or more pounds; right now, I’m trying to get out of the 400 club) yet, but what I had lost was truly encouraging.

Still I overate at Thanksgiving, not quite as bad as years past, but I had a fill. I want to say the same thing happened Christmas. The truth is my eating habits weren’t much better. I was eating breakfast on most days, and given which week it was, I probably was struggling with recording what I was eating. I still have that struggle, but I’ve gotten better at it.

Even then, with the shoddy, inconsistent journaling that I was doing, it was having an effect – I was seeing on paper what I was eating. Even when I wrote it down from memory and forgot things, I still got a good idea, and having strings of days and occasionally weeks where almost all of it is there gives a VERY good idea of what one’s diet is like. It’s like giving yourself tools. You could walk into Harbor Freight and fill a cart with tools you need around your house and walk right out with them, just skip past the checkout lines – it’s a shopping spree! So why not give yourself the tools? I still have to ask myself that sometimes, when I’ve let myself get behind a day on the journaling.

I had a little splurge last night – a year ago a splurge might have involved a buffet or a discount at some restaurant, maybe Denny’s or Bennigan’s (yes, only the finest restaurants, thank you), or Breakfast with Becker at the TA truck stop/All You Can Eat diner. Maybe just a call to Carmelo’s in Bridgeton for a cheesesteak (garlic) stromboli (the thing’s a honkin’ monster!) with a couple of appetizers (variety!), something cola (mix garlic and cola and I can let out {oral} gastric emissions that will curl your nose hairs. And now you know that. Condolences.), etc…

Last night, I went to Bennigan’s with my friend Mark and his lovely girlfriend Kathleen. Kat had a burger, Mark ordered a Turkey O’Toole (sliced turkey, cheese, a little dijon on a pretzel roll. Quite nice), and I ordered a bricked rocket steak salad (with LOTS of nice green leafies and a light balsamic). Mark and I also ordered fajitas and shared them. I let myself eat more than I normally would, but still took home fajitas and salad. We also had some tortillas with salsa before dinner, and I had a slice of carrot cake after.

All told, not an unhealthy meal, except maybe the carrot cake at the end, and even then, only because it was as late at night as it was. But last year it would have been a lot worse, and before I’d started working with Eeks? *shiver*

I slowed down on the blog around the time my weight loss slowed down, which was late Winter, approaching Spring (I think). Around that time, I was still struggling with the journaling and really just starting to find some success with diet. One thing I’d learned from all this recording is that there really wasn’t enough consistency in my eating. There wasn’t a lot of balance either. I was eating breakfast consistently. That made a huge difference. But it wasn’t enough. I finally decided that I wanted to try three meals a day. I could eat at other times, if hungry, but I wanted three meals a day, morning, mid-day and evening.

And each of those meals would consist of a serving from each food group. You know, a balanced diet, almost! It’s funny, how simple this ended up being. I never really got that whole food pyramid business, which is now something completely different, thanks to government by Monty Python (who would probably do a better job – wouldn’t you all rather see Johnny Cleese up on the supreme court?).

The food schemes had always been complicated because it all boils down to a serving. What’s a serving? Depends on who you ask. Notice that the food companies change serving sizes to suit their needs – their needs being you feeling secure enough about the nutritional values to buy the product.

So what exactly IS a serving? I decided that I couldn’t be bothered with that drivel. May be the best thing I ever did. Look, I can figure out a basic idea of what a serving is – so can you! A slice of bread? 1 bread serving! An apple, 1 fruit serving! Yogurt – whatever seems reasonable to you! My yogurt servings are smaller than what’s recommended on the Fage containers. Simply because I don’t feel like I need a damn cup or two of yogurt, a few spoons will do (mind you, in a mini container, the serving is MUCH smaller, you see what I mean?).

So I call the shots on the servings, and each meal basically has one of each. I did that, and it was MUCH easier to track what I was eating. The only trouble I had was remembering the 5 food groups. Of course there’s fruit, vegetable and meat (which I just refer to as “protein”), but even now cereals and dairy tend to, at least momentarily, elude me.

But you can write them down. In fact, I highly recommend it – make a list  make 5 lists – one for each food group, with foods that you like from each one. There’s a solid starting point. All you have to do to each a nice balanced meal then is go through each food group at a time and pick what you want. Done-ski.

Once you’ve established that for a week or so, it’s time to start playing with it – maybe you have two slices of toast in the morning, and skip bread at lunch or dinner. Of course, if you decided to have two protein, you don’t have to skip anything! Same for fruit and vegetables!

Then you can get into splitting up the meals, so that you’re eating something more like 6 meals than three. I’d start with breakfast. This is how it went and somehow, following this practice, I came to the point where, granted, it’ll still help if I continue, but I really don’t NEED to record what I eat. I don’t enjoy crap foods the way I used to.

Somewhere along the way I learned something else – about my stomach. I splurged late one evening. Started eating and had a hard time stopping. I’m sure I set off some kind of trigger and there I was. Well, I noticed that I was starting to feel full. It had been a while since I’d felt full – that’s a good thing.

Now here I was feeling full, which probably meant I should stop eating soon, but I didn’t. Suddenly I was in pain. Up until then, my stomach had been shrinking down from it’s normal, engorged size. And I decided to fill it right back up. The pain I felt, I soon realized, was the stomach organ stretching.

Suddenly, I felt like throwing up, and on two different levels. I’ve come to understand bulimics over the past year or so. I actually really get it. As I sat there that night, in pain, I seriously thought about throwing my fingers down my throat and letting it all back up. I put it down there, now I want it back, is that so wrong? I didn’t want to deal with the consequences that all that food was going to put on me!

Not only did I want it out, but I actually felt like I might throw up whether I wanted to or not. That put my head over the toilet. I actually considered trying, at some point, to induce the vomiting. I was scared. I knew I’d like it. I’ve been sick enough that vomiting has given me relief before, and I knew it would give me overwhelming relief then.

I had to take responsibility for what I’d done. I didn’t really want to vomit, because if I did, whether I’d made it happen or not, I’d enjoy some part of it. I’d want to do it again. I’d start looking at things a certain way – where I can eat what I want and just vomit it out. I’ve got enough “f’ing” problems.

So I tried very hard not to vomit, though I kept my head over the toilet. Swallowed back, breathing exercises, everything I’ve ever taught myself to avoid vomiting. I succeeded. I showed myself something important – that I’d take the consequences of my binging and splurging, over using vomit as a “get out of jail free card”. I’d deal with any weight gain and just keep hacking at it until I’d lost that weight again.

I began to look at it as a road traveled. For most of my life, I enjoyed the feeling of my stomach stretching. I’d go to a buffet, look it over, say “Yes!” and waddle out of there feeling so… euphoric, relaxed, my stomach felt like it was in love with me. These are some awfully frightening words, when I think about it. I LOVED the feeling of my stomach stretching out, and managed to ignore that this is exactly what was happening.

Even worse, I LOATHED the feeling of my stomach shrinking. I had to come to terms with that too, that night. That awful, squirking, skulking, whining feelingin the pit of your stomach, that you get when you’re REALLY REALLY hungry, is your stomach shrinking (I think). And I’ve avoided that all my life. I hated it.

Now, mind, I still don’t really LIKE it. But I embrace it. If I feel it, I don’t immediately start looking for food, I determine if I need any. Can I wait, or am I being too active to risk running through my nutrients?

So the path – most of my life walking in one direction, suddenly I’m walking in a different direction. I’m going the other way, and occasionally, I’m going to get sidetracked here and there. It would be foolish to hope for the impossible. So I have to deal with that, and the most important thing is how I deal with it – do I keep going or do I turn around again and head in the proper direction? I can make up a small loss.

So, to help keep unnecessary backsliding to a minimum, I still keep a food journal, and I’m better about writing in it, a lot better. Still not perfect, but no one is. The funny thing is, now that I have that taken care of, there’s still plenty in the food world I need to work on. For one thing, I need to wrap my head around calories. I can keep track of my calories if I get a better handle on it. Again, I’m going to need to apply certain principles, like not getting too overworked about precision. But I’ll get it.

Next article I’ll be talking about exercise, which is what I’m off to do right now!